I Got A Kindle

So this is supposed to be a writing blog now, which means that for the nonce it is a reading blog since I don't have anything really worth talking about from a writing perspective.

So I just got a Kindle.

And I completely fell in love with it immediately.

This only makes sense with a little back story. I was a bit of a nerdy kid. I wasn't as nerdy as some but nerdier than most. Given a choice between going out and playing kickball and staying in and reading the Belgariad for the fifth time there's a good chance the books would win.

It's not like I didn't have friends but the characters in books became friends too. So reading the Belgariad for the fifth time was much like going to spend a weekend in Vegas with your old college buddies except that I was twelve.

And I don't mean to single out the Belgariad. The same was true with Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, The Hardy Boys, R Daneel Olivaw, and pretty much every denizen of Xanth. At one point I measured things on my bookshelf and I had over three feet of Piers Anthony books.

All I ever wanted for Christmas was bookstore gift cards.

And then I lost it.

I don't really know when it happened. I went off to college at 18 and wasn't ready. I ended up coming home getting a job and eventually getting my degree (BA History) at night. That didn't leave much time to read. It was somewhere in there between graduating high school and years later getting a college degree that reading ceased to be one of the pillars of my recreation time.

And then I got my kindle and it all came back. I spent an entire day reading Hunger Games. I just hunkered down, immersed myself in someone else's world and only pulled myself out when I had to pee.

It was awesome.

And I immediately went looking for old friends. Since then I have been buried in the extra long version of The Stand which is not really something you can read in one sitting. I feel like I have met up with long lost friends and reconnected with a part of my past. There's a certain degree of rancid history (you might know it better as nostalgia) there and it's just phenomenal.

Anyway, about the device. It does what it does really well. It's not a tablet and if you expect it to be you will be disappointed. You read shit on it and it helps you do that. It doesn't get between you and the world the way hardcover books sometimes do.

The screen is very readable. I read for a whole day with no problems at all.

I got the wifi version with the ads and I'm pretty glad I did. I can get books from my couch. I can't really imagine a situation where I'm going to have a need to purchase a book while away from my house that can't wait until I get to a wifi hot spot. Maybe it exists but really, I'm not sure it does.

And the ads are not remotely intrusive. When the machine is off, you have an ad. It's like a book cover. When you're looking at your bookshelf of ungodly amounts of reading material there's a little ad down the bottom. When you're actually reading....zippo. It's awesome and good and lovely.